Cuttack, Nov. 30: The Odisha Private Engineering College Association (Opeca) has appealed to chief minister Naveen Patnaik for conducting the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) for admission to BTech courses from 2016.

The state government must conduct the OJEE for BTech courses as the Odisha Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) Act, 2007 (OPEI), is still in force, said the association.

"Besides, the government cannot decide to conduct OJEE for MBA and MCA courses and not for BTech courses as no amendment has been made to the act," Opeca, the umbrella body of self-financed engineering colleges, said in a memorandum. The association was seeking the chief minister's intervention.

"Conducting OJEE for admission to first year BTech courses from 2016 is necessary for the survival of technical education in the state," Opeca secretary Binod Dash said. "In 2014 and 2015 more than 60 per cent of the seats remained vacant in BTech courses. As a result, colleges were affected."

At present, there are 98 degree engineering colleges in the state with an intake capacity of 48,687 students. While nine of them are government engineering colleges, the rest are all self-financed.

Until 2013, admissions into BTech courses in colleges were done through OJEE. However, with the Odisha government joining the Joint Entrance Examination (Main), a common all-India engineering entrance test from 2014, students aspiring for BTech seats appeared for the JEE (Main) conducted by CBSE.

OJEE was conducted for MBA as well as MCA courses which also have All-India level exams. "This is a clear violation of the OPEI Act of 2007," Dash said.

Opeca had raised the issue in the Orissa High Court following the state government's decision not to conduct OJEE in 2014 and 2015.

In August 2014, the high court had directed the state government to hold Special OJEE for BTech courses for 2014-15. The OJEE had approached the Supreme Court by challenging the high court order, but it withdrew it later and implemented the high court's direction.

When the state government decided to take part in the CBSE conducted JEE (Main) exam 2015 for admission to all government and private engineering colleges in the state and not hold OJEE, the high court ruled that "the decision is not permissible under the OPEI Act of 2007."

The high court directed the state government to conduct OJEE for the 2015-16 academic session.